Saturday, June 9, 2012

Crabs for Dinner

During our last Bahamas vacation, Jerry (which ironically means "man with spear") speared these tasty ocean creatures for dinner one night. We scored three rock crabs and two tiny grouper that Jerry speared just to say that he did.

The kids always get a kick out of holding the dead crabs to see how much they weigh and how long they are.

Phoebe has no fear of things living or dead. We would often find her holding starfish, sea cucumbers (sea penises), jelly fish, hermit crabs, sea urchins, or some other poor sea creature. She's not very gentle. For many reasons, I'm glad I'm not a small animal in her hands.

The crabs really don't look that big when Jerry holds them. He's so dang big that he makes the crabs look teeny tiny.

But they most certainly are NOT teeny or tiny!

Jerry would put them in a pot of boiling water to cook and then cut open the meat to share with the family.

Guess how much meat we would get out of that huge specimen? Oh, maybe 2 bites each. The body is full of gross things we won't eat, even though Mr. Zimmer from "Bizarre Foods" says you can eat all of that mess. And those huge claws? Almost nothing. I'm not sure how those crabs actually moved their claws with such little muscle.

With such a big catch, we would be hard pressed to survive on this alone.

OK, Mom, that sounds like a lot of complaining about the crabs Dad caught. You know, he was SWIMMING when he caught these things. He used a snorkel to get in and under some really sharp reefs, braving cold water, jellyfish and the giant shark you are certain lives in that cove yet no one has ever seen. He had to find the crab or fish first, and then shoot it, a moving target, with a spear launched only with a slingshot.